What seems fixed does not remain unchanged. Every form exists under certain conditions, changes and passes away. Yet it is often precisely what is lasting, tangible and measurable that is taken to be truly real. Change then seems like something that happens to things afterwards.
But is there any thing that first exists entirely on its own and only then enters into change?
It is not that fully formed things begin to change. Within continual change, forms emerge, remain for a time and dissolve again.
A human being, too, is not a self-contained object within this. The body, sensations, thoughts and self-images change. To fix our being to any one of these forms would be to make a single moment the final measure.
What is being described here is an experience, not just a philosophical idea: change and that which makes it possible are not separate. The ground of existence is not behind appearances. It is inherent in them, yet is exhausted by none of them.
“Prior” therefore does not mean earlier in time. It points to what is always present, without which neither appearance nor disappearance, neither being nor non-being, would be possible.
This is where the meaning of the divine lies for me. Not a being alongside other beings, nor a power outside existence. What I mean is that reality from which nothing can be separate.
Even as a teenager, I once said in a conversation: “Whether God exists or not amounts to the same thing.” I did not mean that the question was meaningless. I meant that neither affirming nor denying God reaches beyond this reality. Both are already possible within it.
This reality does not depend on whether a concept survives. Rather, every concept loses its claim to encompass it completely—including the concept “God”.
This is what I mean by the truly divine.